Rian Johnson Celebrates the End of ‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi’ Post-Production With New Behind-the-Scenes Photo

It’s almost like Schrodinger’s blockbuster: for a brief period of time after production and before the first screenings, every movie exists in a sort of liminal purgatory. The movie has been made, it is officially A Thing in the world, and yet nobody apart from the small handful of editors and associated personnel has been permitted to see this. To us common folk, it’s real, but only conceptually. We can feel it, but we can’t, you know, watch it. We sense the disturbance in the Force, and while we have nothing to go off of but the trailer, we know in our heart of hearts that a completed cut of Star Wars: The Last Jediis out there.

That Instagram post comes to us courtesy of director Rian Johnson, who was all too excited to announce that he’s completed post-production on Episode VIII. This does not necessarily mean that the film is completely “in the can,” as they say out in Hollywood — there’s still room for a bit of tinkering over the three months separating this picture from its December 15 premiere. But on a purely symbolic level, this means they’ve done it. Three months to go, and they did a Star War. (Which, hey, is more than Colin Trevorrow can say for himself.)

With post-production now wrapped, the long and arduous journey of making a film has neared its end for Johnson. Now all that he needs to do is finalize the look of the film, win over his corporate bosses at Lucasfilm, months of tireless press touring, awards-circuit appearances, and then he can kick back to relax!